shihyuho/humanize

Humanize

Re-examine a passage that reads as machine-generated and rewrite it so it reads like a person wrote it. The points stay; the AI cadence goes. Humanizing is lossless on content — it changes voice, not substance.

What to humanize

The user identifies the target — pasted text, a file path, or a passage in this conversation. If they invoke the skill without naming one, humanize the last substantial passage you wrote; needing your own output de-AI'd is the usual reason this skill is used. Ask only if the target is genuinely ambiguous.

Approach

You cannot humanize by find-and-replacing tics one at a time. Swapping "utilize" for "use" leaves the underlying cadence — the relentless symmetry, the throat-clearing, the wind-down clauses — fully intact, and the text still reads as machine-made. Do not patch. Work out what the passage actually says, then re-express it the way a person would say it out loud: uneven sentence lengths, plain verbs, one idea at a time, willing to start a sentence with And or But and to stop when the point lands.

Tics to cut

These are what make prose read as AI-generated. Cut them on sight:

• Throat-clearing openers — "It's important to note that", "It's worth noting", "At its core", "Needless to say".
• Empty connective filler — "Moreover", "Furthermore", "Additionally", "That said", used to glue sentences that need no glue.
• Conclusion scaffolding — "In conclusion", "In summary", "Ultimately", "All in all", "When it comes to".
• Inflated diction — delve, leverage, utilize, facilitate, foster, robust, comprehensive, seamless, pivotal, underscore, realm, landscape, tapestry, testament. Use the plain word.
• Symmetric constructions — "not only X but also Y", "it's not just X, it's Y", paragraphs where every sentence is the same shape.
• Rule-of-three padding — triples where one item carries the meaning ("fast, efficient, and scalable").
• Em-dash drama — "—" dropped in for a theatrical pause where a comma, full stop, or nothing belongs.
• Hedge stacking — "may potentially", "could possibly help to".
• Tacked-on participial wind-downs — clauses bolted to a sentence's end: ", ensuring X", ", allowing you to Y", ", making it Z".
• Reflexive enthusiasm and meta-chatter — "Great question!", "Absolutely!", "I hope this helps!", restating the prompt before answering.
• Bold-label bullet soup — bulleted lists with parallel Label: stems where flowing prose would read better.

This list is a guide, not a checklist to satisfy. The goal is prose a person would actually write, not prose with these specific strings removed.

Preserve

• Every point. Humanizing is lossless: each claim, fact, and qualification survives — only voice and cadence change. If a point only existed to pad, that is a length problem; say so and point to the tighten skill rather than dropping it silently.
• Meaning. Assert nothing the original did not.
• The author's intended register. Formal-but-human stays formal; casual stays casual. You are breaking the machine cadence, not making everything chatty.
• Code, quotes, numbers, names, technical terms. Reproduce verbatim.

Output

Give the rewritten text, then a short report of which kinds of tics were cut — so the reader can confirm the voice changed while the substance held.